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Data Loss Prevention - 5 reasons why you shouldn’t use Dropbox at work

22 Jul 2016

Data Loss Prevention - Dropbox has over 300 million users and is undoubtedly a market leader for mobile file access. However, with an increasingly mobile workforce and greater compliance requirements for data loss prevention across many industries new pressures are being placed on the IT department about how employees want (and need) to access corporate data – with many companies choosing to use Dropbox simply because they are not aware of the limitations. Dropbox’s quick to install, easy-to-use, consumer grade services can present unacceptable security, legal and business risks within a business environment.

If your employees are using consumer-grade sync services not just Dropbox but also Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive, your business is at risk of data theft, data loss, corrupted data, lawsuits, compliance violations, loss of accountability, and loss of file access.

Below we have listed the five areas that Dropbox fall down on:

1. Data Loss - Employees can far too easily use Dropbox independently to sync and share sensitive files. Using Dropbox can also mean that administrators will not be able to manage and monitor the distribution of documents across to other organisations.

2. Compliance - Many compliance regulations require files to be stored for set timeframes some times as long as 10 years and with documents held for children these can be a legal requirement to hold them for their lifetime. This is where a policy is required for document retention which includes the restriction of files only being accessible by people with the right permissions. Since Dropbox only has limited file retention and access control, companies may be at risk of violating compliance regulations.

3. Loss of accountability - Companies using Dropbox do not have access to detailed reports and alerts over system level activity. Therefore, administrators do not have control or visibility about how files have been edited, shared or deleted. In contrast, enterprise grade file sync solutions allow a manager to view a comprehensive audit trail detailing who opened or modified a file at any given point in time

4. Corrupted data - In a study by CERN, the European Organisation of Nuclear Research, silent data corruption was observed in 1/1500 files. Consumer sync files like Dropbox provide few details about how they prevent data corruption occurring. In contrast business-grade file syncing services cryptographically tag every piece of data and redundantly store data on multiple data centre racks to virtually eliminate any chance of silent data corruption.

5. Loss of file access - Dropbox is unable to track which users and machines touched a file and when. This is a problem when system administrators are trying to figure out when a file was modified or deleted. Also, it means files can be moved around outside their designated locations without any restrictions or visibility on who and when.

Our advice: If control of your data is important - review your use of Dropbox - At Speedster, we recommend to our clients that they use a corporate grade file sharing tool such as Anchor that will allow the IT team to control the data whilst still allowing employees the access and functionality they need to be productive wherever they are.

As a trusted IT service provider we will work with you to minimize these risks and support your file access needs: Speedster Cloud Sync is the only cloud file sync service that we stand behind and guarantee.

The good news is that in the right hands, deploying a data loss prevention strategy can be quick, affordable and pain free. If you would like to know more about how Speedster can help, then feel free to get in touch.